Eur. Phys. J. Plus (2022) 137: 1286
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjp/s13360-022-03422-y

Regular Article

Study of $D^0,D^{+},D^{\ast +}$ and $D_s^{+}$ mesons production in p-Pb collision at $\sqrt{s_{\mathit{NN}}}=$ 5.02 TeV

¹ Department of Physics, COMSATS University Islamabad, Park Road, 44000, Islamabad, Pakistan
² Department of Physics, Govt. Maulana Zafar Ali Khan Graduate College, Wazirabad, Pakistan
³ Punjab Higher Education Department, 54000, Lahore, Pakistan

^b aneerakainat@gmail.com

Received: 20 October 2021
Accepted: 21 October 2022
Published online: 29 November 2022

Abstract

In this article we have reported the $p_T$ spectra of $D^0,D^{+},D^{\ast +}$ and $D_s^{+}$ mesons in $p$-Pb collisions at $\sqrt{s_{\mathit{NN}}}=5.02$ TeV in the rapidity interval of $-0.96<y<0.04$ and in the transverse momentum range of $0<p_T<36$ GeV/c. The spectra are obtained using Monte-Carlo simulation model PYTHIA 8.2 using default and Color Reconnection (CR) tunes. The nuclear modification factor $R_{\mathit{pPb}}$ is also plotted for the selected charged particles ($D^0,D^{+},D^{\ast +}$ and $D_s^{+}$) as a function of $p_T$. The heavy-to-lighter D meson ratios, i.e., $D^{+}/D^0$ and $D^{\ast +}/D^0$ are also plotted. To test the validity of this model, the simulation data is compared with the ALICE experimental data at $\sqrt{s_{\mathit{NN}}}=5.02$ TeV for $p$-Pb collision (Abelev in Phys. Rev. Lett. 113(23):232301, 2014). Both tunes of PYTHIA 8 give good description of the ALICE experimental data at low transverse momentum but disagree at high $p_T$ and show similar behavior for all four selected charge D meson species. The value of $R_{\mathit{pPb}}$ is larger than unity for all selected charge particles for both default and CR tunes which could be due to the Cronin effect.